Step 1: buy a box of SERIOUS contractor bags (large black plastic trash bags). Buy the thickest and best ones--it'll pay off because you can reuse the thicker bags multiple times. The ones I use are 55 gallon (208 liters) and 3 mm thick.
Step 2: ▼ Place all your weeds, grass clippings, old leaves, dead-headed old flowers, thinnings, etc. into the bag. I collect the weeds in a bushel-basket sized trug and then transfer to the bag which is set up in a wheelbarrow. The bags get too heavy for me to drag around, so the wheelbarrow helps a lot.
Step 3: ▼Pile the bags in the sun.
Over the next week or three, turn the bags once or twice so a different side of the bag faces the sun. (For efficiency, do this after a rain, so you're also dumping water off the bags to prevent mosquitos breeding.)
I pile mine on a gravel/concrete-block pad. If piled on the lawn, the bags would kill the grass.
- If you DO want to kill some grass (to put in a new garden bed, perhaps?) this would be a two-for-one trick--overlap the bags so the entire area you want to kill is covered.
- If you DON'T want to kill the grass, pile bags on bare earth or concrete or gravel.
Step 4: ▼ In as few as 3 weeks of summer sun, the contents turn into very nice compost.
Step 5: ▼ spread the compost into your beds.
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| Irises and mini day-lilies. Irises don't like compost on their roots, so the compost stops just short. |
Best compost is when brown stuff (old leaves) and green stuff (fresh weeds, grass clippings) are put into the same bag. Yet such is the power of hot rot that even a bag of oak leaves (all brown) will make a decent mulch in just a few weeks of hot summer sun.
The heat of the sun kills everything, and weed seeds are de-activated. However, I'd never take a chance with big and prickly seed heads like thistles or burdock. I'd cut off those seed heads and dispose separately: prickly seed heads could rip the bag. Very thick stems and old clematis vines get chopped into shorter lengths.
How I discovered this: My big compost bed was full (still is, lol). Having bagged up a bunch of garden waste to take to the composting station at the dump, I never got around to actually going. In a few weeks, the bags had collapsed flat and when I looked inside--lo and behold! Compost! I got to work recycling the bags with fresh garden waste and have had a pretty good supply of usable compost ever since. Bonus: no chipmunk tunnels or tree roots.
If you mix garden waste and kitchen waste, either keep the bags where varmints can't get at them or compost the kitchen waste separately and more securely. Plastic contractor bags would be no match for a hungry raccoon.
Keep one bag opened--I've usually got a partial bag going, so all the "drive-by weeding" goes in there until it's full.
Have a great rest-of-the-summer!
--TK
